Sunday, October 25, 2015

"Rome is inexhaustible." - Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“I think he has quite exhausted Rome.”

“Ah no, that’s a shallow judgment.  Rome is inexhaustible.”  (The Portrait of a Lady, Ch. 46)

The Portrait of a Lady, the 1881 novel about a young American woman who travels to Europe and attracts a series of stalkers, has a peculiar relationship with Rome, the city, not the empire.  One scene in America, barely more than one setting in England, glimpses of London and Paris, a bit more of Florence, but plenty of Rome.

James reverts to the travel writing mode I noted in his 1871 story “The Passionate Pilgrim,” but now he integrates the plot more closely with the tourism.  The heroine, Isabel Archer, is attending church at St. Peters (as a tourist – she is not Catholic) when she comes across one of her many obsessive suitors, Lord Warburton, and a scene with him takes place amidst the service.  “In that splendid immensity individual indiscretion carries but a short distance” (Ch. 27) – that is James taking a jab at the suitor, who should know to behave better in church, more like the second suitor attending the service:

“What’s your opinion of St. Peter’s?” Mr. Osmond asked of Isabel.

“It’s very large and very bright,” said the girl.

An answer worthy of Daisy Miller, although Isabel is smarter than Daisy Miller, or is smarter than Daisy Miller acts.

In the next chapter, the encounter with the Lord Warburton takes place in front of “the lion of the collection,” (Ch. 28), the Dying Gladiator (“It is a work of profound interest and unrivalled excellence,” see p. 208).  Is James going to write his novel by working his way through his Baedeker, I wondered?  No, James used Murray, not Baedeker.

After her marriage, Isabel lives in Rome in a palace, “a dark and massive structure,”

which bore a stern old Roman name, which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which was mentioned in “Murray” and visited by tourists who looked disappointed and depressed… (Ch. 36)

Whatever my frustrations with James, I have learned to get his humor, and also his indirection.  In this scene one secondary character (Mr. Rosier) is fretting over another (Pansy), but James has not yet described the living arrangements of the heroine; this is the way he slips that in, as if I care about where Pansy lives.

The theme culminates with Isabel taking a drive on the Campagna, on the Appian Way, thus connecting her to Carducci and Pater:

She had long ago taken old Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe.  She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet were still upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached itself  and grew objective…  (Ch. 49)

That last is a highly Jamesian phrase.  The pathetic fallacy amongst the ruins.  “[S]he had grown to think of [Rome] chiefly as the place where people had suffered.”  Thus her cruel husband who, a few chapters earlier, had called Rome “inexhaustible,” an irony for poor suffering Isabel.

24 comments:

  1. Fine posting! I am odd, I suppose, in that James's settings (and their effects upon people) often impress me more than the characters (and their effects upon others). Note that Henry James and Edith Wharton, on this date is 1900, began a letter-writing friendship; see my blog posting for details.

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  2. It's really long past time I reread this. I've got Daniel Deronda coming up in class soon: maybe that plus your posts will get me going on it.

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  3. Ah, the treatment of Rome in this novel is really interesting. "Daisy Miller," too - in Portrait James revisits the Colosseum scene! No one gets malaria this time.

    About Wharton, I am an ignoramus. I should do something about that.

    Rohan, post-DD, post-Eliot seminar, that would be a perfect time to revisit this novel and James's subtle argument with Eliot. Whether my posts will be any help - eh, let's hold off on that.

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    1. I'm feeling the need to dig into something really wordy right now!

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    2. I saw that. You requested more words, and well-meaning commenters suggested fewer words.

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  4. I'm going to have to read this again later because I was too busy chuckling over your opening description of the book "about a young American woman who travels to Europe and attracts a series of stalkers" to pay attention. A truer description/summary I have not read :)

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  5. Isabel attracts an unusual and specific type of man. In the hands of a different novelists, that Caspar Goodwood would be one creepy feller. I have doubts about how well he is running his Massachusetts cotton mill, too.

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  6. And to what extent is Henry James's psychology affecting the characters, their personalities, their choices, and their attitudes? I suspect biographical criticism is a fruitful avenue (and I base that on my reading about James's relationships with family and women); however, I leave that to minds that are sharper, wiser, and less impaired than mine.

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    1. "Isabel Archer, c'est moi.", perhaps.
      Orwell said there are characters who are autobiographical in that the author identifies with them rather than because of similarities of life. Certainly - thinking quickly - Isabel seems the closest to such a character in James's books.

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    2. Yes, especially since a James-like figure is already so strongly present in the novel as the narrator.

      I didn't write a word about him. He's interesting, too.

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  7. Michael Gorra's recent book on The Portrait of a Lady is basically a biography in disguise. It uses Portrait as, I don't know, a structuring device for the biography. Or maybe vice versa.

    Maybe I should read it. James Wood has a good review of it. Wood is a real Jamesian: "When I think ideally of ‘the novel’, this [Portrait] is the one I recur to."

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    1. Think I should read it too. Heard so much praise. The public library has a copy.

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  8. Why did George Eliot and Henry James both choose Rome to be a place of misery? It is fun! Oh hold on... During my trip to Rome, I was sick for several days. Never mind.

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  9. I don't know exactly. Rome has a strange image - the Vatican, the seat of the Republic and Empire, a city known for centuries as a ruin, an inhabited ruin. At least in Portrait, none of the characters got malaria when they went to the Coliseum.

    I just read a German novel in which Rome is the center of evil, more or less. And some modern French prose poems or whatever they are in which Rome is an oppressive work of art.

    I will keep working on Rome, on Italy. Next year is the 200th anniversary of Goethe's Italian Journey! Readalong! Ha ha ha, no one cares. Now Goethe, for him Rome is fun fun fun.

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    1. Hahaha. Wish I could say I care, but I can't pretend :D
      (But nobody cared when I started the Norwegian literature challenge!)

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    2. The suspicion and even loathing of Goethe in the book blog world is a phenomenon.

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    3. Oh no. I just haven't read anything he wrote, that's all, & there is no reason other than that I haven't felt an urge to read his works, the same way I never read Tolstoy till I turned 20.
      My reading is very limited.

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    4. Readalong? Hey, I'd do it. I've poked around in Italian Journey already, mostly for Goethe's observations on Naples, which appears to have overwhelmed him a bit - rather, I should have said, even him. And besides, W. H. Auden is the co-translator. How can it not be worth reading?

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  10. Actually maybe an Italian Journey readalong is not such a bad idea. Fit it in with the November German Literature Month next year. It's a book of the highest interest. Hard one, though, harder than it looks.

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  11. Well all right, the Italian Journey readalong is a go, as they say, somewhere. For next year's German Literature Month, which means, in terms of reading, since it is long, October.

    Good, good. Italy, Rome especially, changed Goethe. A lot of odd stuff in German literature is explained by this book. A Walter Pater "story" I just read is partly explained by this book. It is about a proto-Goethe.

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    1. I imagine it's nothing like Sterne's Sentimental Journey Through France, but I think I'm in anyway.

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    2. Like Sterne, I wish! But Yorick never even gets to Italy, not in the text, at least. Italy only exists in the title, which you fiendishly truncated.

      All right, that has more relevance to Goethe's book than I realized. Goethe twice - twice! - turned back from Italy without setting foot in it. The idea of Italy was too powerful to challenge. Or something.

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  12. I tried deliberately to avoid reading your (and Di's) posts on this novel till I had finished reading it myself. As you know, when I write about a book, I tend to read the whole thing, and then write a monstrous Gargantuan post about it that only the ideal blog-reader with an ideal insomnia will read. But there have been so many interruptions in my reading (I still have some two weeks' of reading the thing at current pace till I reach the end), that I decided to read your posts anyway. And do be warned: I shall be recycling many of your ideas and insights without attribution.

    I shall go and read Di's posts now, and see if there's anything there I could steal,

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  13. "recycling many of your ideas and insights without attribution" - that is what they are for.

    I know what you mean - sometimes, I want the book straight, and other times I could use some inspiration. Or some help, some trail-clearing.

    Di definitely has some things worth stealing.

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